


The Last Letters

by Lilimarine



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Love Letters, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 09:09:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29822649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilimarine/pseuds/Lilimarine
Summary: What if Laurence wrote a letter to Gehrman after they were apart from each other?What if Gehrman wrote back after he received a letter that have never arrived in his hands?Translated by @big_ocean, thanks for helping!
Relationships: Gehrman/Laurence (Bloodborne)
Kudos: 4





	The Last Letters

Dear Gehrman,

Ink bleeds onto the parchment as I write down these words. It hurts as if it’s not the paper in which the ink is sinking, but my very own skin, and every stroke is but an arrow piercing through my heart. I’m afraid I must clear up everything before my day comes: I have a feeling for a future where my head will fall off and roll onto the ground with nothing but a swift lift.

Here I put “Dear Gehrman” in the exact same manner that you have always called me by, but the parchments on my hands feel unfamiliar with this name. These short syllables caught in harsh breaths escaping from between my lips indicate someone they don’t know, and so I came to the realization that this is the first time I’ve ever written to you. We have always stayed by each other’s side and have never been apart. We have looked each other directly in the eyes and confided in one another, supported each other like two fellow pilgrims, and rested on each other when we’re tired. There has never been such a distance between us that we needed to rely on paper and pen to see each other. Yet upon this letter now appears your name, my dearest Gehrman, and so we must part.

Please pardon my loss of manners. I was also at a loss of words the first time you told me that you’re intent on hunting beasts. And there goes all my happy days spent in your arms! Compared to having to watch your cloak disappear among Yharnam’s cascading colors of night and constantly fearing for your death by the throat of a beast, how blessed would I be if I were to die and offer my life as a sacrifice! Am I now paying the debts of all our happiness before? I have spent countless hours praying despicably for this day to come later, for me to see you once again and to look at you in the eyes again, Gehrman. If I ever get to hear your voices again and listen to you recite the pale whispers of the Moon, I wonder if I would be able to understand your determination and push you toward Flora’s embrace as you wished. This won’t take long, you promised. And I swore to you that I would come and welcome your return. Yet, I’m begging you, find a reason to say that you love me before we part this time!

Today a hunter came to seek the blood. He’s as young as we were back in Byrgenwerth, almost still a child. When I gifted him the blood he spoke of lamps in Yharnam and a dream, and that he once saw you… Dear God! There was a burning desire inside of me, urging me to beg him to tell me more about you, a desire to let him carry my special love to you. Yet the cold hands of the Moon grabbed me by the throat; I ended up saying nothing. I went to the Old Workshop, for the hunter mentioned a garden of white flowers. Is that so, that the Moon chose to create her dreams here, and that the Great Ones in the nightmare are full of sympathy? I wish this place full of memories is able to bring you some comfort. I know you; you must be sharing my pain. Gehrman, are you here. My voice fell in the empty room, like dusts shaken off of swinging stage curtains. My robes fell as well; your hands were touching my spine, going all the way down, and I found myself lying on the mat. Let the pale eyes of the Moon see it all: let she see you ruin me like you have carried me up to the Altar countless times. You would bend slowly forwards, drawing circles with your gentle hands. I cried out loud, shaking out of happiness. If someone opened the Old Workshop door that moment, he would see their Vicar, naked and red, twerking and moaning on the ground, shouting your name. Ruin me, and let him spread it to all of Yharnam that I belong to you always. You would kiss my knuckles in front of every one of them, flip my hand over with your lips on my wrist, all the while keeping your eyes on me. I would stroke your lips and stick my index finger into your mouth to feel your warmth and your sucking, and do the same with my middle and ring fingers. Yet my lips cannot find yours. Oh, Flora, of the moon, of the dream: may you turn this into a part of my dream, may you bring Gehrman my breaths and warmth, may he kiss my thighs with his lips instead of my hands, inside and out. I reach out and grab your hair, Gehrman, and I wrap myself tightly around you, your muscles tensing all over. My sweet dear Laurence, I am always here for you. Yes, this is everything you’ve promised me. When I stare into your eyes you would reveal everything to me. You would look at me, as the Moon whispers, I love you, I love you.

I did not return to the Great Cathedral until dawn. The hunters were looking for me, and not a single one of them thought of going to the Old Workshop. Have you already been forgotten? My hands were still shaking, and the sweetness frightened me as I feared for you leaving me. You were there by my side, but I longed for you harder than ever. You peeled yourself away from my arms, like peeling flesh away right from my heart. And now you must know what the Vicar kneeling before the Altar has been praying, what ridiculous, blasphemous, and sacrilegious prayers has he been hiding in his mind. Dear God, may you protect my lover to every strand of his hair. I would throw away everything to follow him, and he is still waiting for me! Give me more time, and don’t ignite the fire in my bloods just yet! Don’t let him see me destroyed! I am scared now, Gehrman, I am scared that you will become memory itself, unable to be moved, unable to be touched, and unable to be found. That one day you’d be left there slowly fading away by yourself. I am scared that you’d be chopped off from the world along with my decapitated head, with small white flowers swiftly drifting to the ground, making a rumbling sound. The flowers were your gift for me from the Old Workshop. Once in Byrgenwerth you brought me a bouquet of coldblood flowers that you found in the Labyrinth. It had to be planted in blood to blossom. I stole a bottle of coldblood from the storage room, and we thus became the first to grow flowers in the Great Ones’ blood. You chuckled as you planted the flowers in. We only realized that there’s no flowers here in Yharnam after we arrived. The rare few were always kept in flower pots on windowsills, withering and completely depleted of scents. I will not forget the day I stepped into the Old Workshop until the day I die. Laurence. You ran toward me. This is for you. A bouquet of white flowers. No. You pulled me around. These all are. And I was like a blind man seeing for the first time; a garden full of white flowers, so lively and happy. You took my hand, Gehrman, and you were by my side – here you are, across the boundary of dream, recalling the same gift as I am, just as I am retelling our past on the parchments. Do you still remember? Dear Gehrman, perhaps I should not indulge in fear in times of peace and joy, but I have to say it honestly and without any secrecy: I think I will never see you in this world again, ever. If I had said these out loud the day we parted, would you still be by my side? Should I have tried to let you stay? Forgive me; I have told too many lies, don’t make me lie to my beloved as well!

I returned to the Old Workshop after that night’s praying, taking my bedsheet and this parchment with me. You’d definitely laugh at me, but do you still remember that I also left Byrgenwerth emptyhanded except my bedsheet? We spent so many nights sleeping under it on the mat together in this very room, just like we were on the four-poster bed back in Byrgenwerth. The Moon is pale and incandescent, and the cold air comes down from above with an ever-enduring coolness that she then dilutes. Oh how wonderful it is to feel your love and fuse with you into one. How do you go to sleep in the dream? Like a prophet at the behest of God, the hunter that arrived today described the most unbelievable picture: you, sitting on a wheelchair, with part of your leg cut off! If you were by my side this moment, I would use the best blood to heal your wound, regardless of whether you refuse or not. In the past you insisted on going to Fishing Hamlet with your broken leg, and after praying you struggled to stand on the pair of knees I used to kiss. You stroked the hair by my ears, from front to back, from back to front. I should at least try to heal your leg, so that you can swing your scythe swiftly in the dream as well (do you still need to hunt?), and cleave through the flesh and blood that prevent us from reuniting, albeit unwillingly.

I went back to live in the Old Workshop for a while, taking care of the white flowers, hoping that you in the dream will notice how they bloom exceptionally well these days. I wrote poems for them, and I watered and rid pests for every single one of them, as if they were my family and my love. Would I die beside them? The Doll could tell you my death, or you could see for yourself through the decaying white flowers that no one would care for anymore. Unlike the coldblood flower that never dies – which stands on my desk now – they do, and maybe it’s just how our love is, an absurd pretense of happiness that was once within easy reach. For me, love is not inevitable; you are. My dear Gehrman, I was so unguarded the day I met you, falling head over heels into my destiny. I can still describe how you looked that day, word by word, but have you already been forgotten? Every time I think of this, my memories of you become blurry – nobody seems to be asking, why is Gehrman gone? Perhaps one day we will be too old for our own good, but at least hundreds of hunters have met you before you returned to the dream, why has nobody mentioned one particular hunter, who’s still elegant and handsome? A single name, a story of the past – but there is none, nothing. Gehrman and his beloved disappeared in Yharnam, like two raindrops dripping across a glass window. Our life and love are slipping through our clenched fingers, smooth, soft, and completely untraceable. Have you already forgotten me, as well? The coat is no longer hanging on the back of the chair, yet the body wearing the coat is empty inside. The only thing left on the wheelchair is a layer of brownish skin, whose eyes are too far hidden under the hat to be seen. My dear Gehrman is now nothing but a shadow, like the Doll collecting dust in the corner. I have moved her out of the house, and she is now sitting in the garden. Sunlight is good for her; I have, of course, remembered to take down her hat, and her gray hair is now faintly shining after combing, speaking of the love yet unspoken. The hunter says that she is looking after the dream, even though it is merely distant and blurry echoes. I hope that she can tell you how desperately I tried to reach you in the dream.

I’m afraid that you would find this letter too long. Well, there are 66 of them left. When I decided to write to you, the number 67 jumped into my head. It’s as if these 66 unwritten love letters could create a world that words alone can ignite, where we could meet and hug. It is time for me to stop writing this letter and finish those. I have one last gift for you: the blood-red roses I took from the Communion as a gift for you. I threw all the roses to the Sky and the Moon, to Nightmare and Deep Sea. Together shall we walk among blooming flower fields, and cuddle in places where beasts ambush and holy statues weep. We shall waste away our lives in vain happiness. Now I finally gave in to my desire to kiss the hunter with the scent of the Moon. This is his reward for the blood, and he shall bring forth this kiss, untouched and unchanged, to you, my dear Gehrman.

Dear Laurence,

A young hunter kissed me the day I received your letter, a very quick touch on the lips. This is for you, from the Vicar. Before he could finish I pulled him back. Your kiss wouldn’t be that short! You should have been here to see how awkward and embarrassed he was when he struggled in my arms. As we kiss across lips and talk across papers, your letter is sitting on the desk right before me. I can see the ruby shines on your ring, blazing back and forth as your fingers move over the yellowing paper covered with black ink. The shines are full of longing and red as blood. I reach out across the parchments to feel the warmth of your hands, and hold them tight. Dropping the quill at once, you clasp my hands tightly, as if you couldn’t believe it. Am I no longer familiar to the hands I used to kiss deeply with my lips? Would you disappear if I love you too hard, chase you too fast, or hold you too tight? Laurence, none of these are real. It is far too easy to spill out these words; why are letter and words the only things left of us? Words find their death right after they leave our mouths. I am almost devastated to see you begging me to say that I love you before we part! Have you not heard me crying to you every single moment I am trapped helplessly on this wheelchair? If they cannot reach your ears and brighten your eyes, what is left of my love to you now? It is slowly burning out, as the parchments can only carry the weight of the pen, the smudged ink and your writing hand. Let me imagine it once more, let me pick up your letter once more, and read it softly, pronouncing the hastily-written words you didn't have time to check the spelling for. Let me kiss your hands once more, like kissing a holy relic once lost, so that I am at least not left with nothing but love. For you are a mixture of everything, Laurence, not just love.

Did you go to Old Workshop alone to reminisce about the old says at Byrgenwerth? Those days were so precious, that I can’t help but feel a growing pain in my chest every time I think back. Do you still remember, Laurence, when the white flowers in the garden blossomed for the first time. It was a bright sunny day, and I was so eager to see you covered with sunlight among flowers that I couldn’t wait but run to you. That day, the golden sunlight that caught the white flowers seemed to catch you too, and as the wind-blown hair brushed against your cheeks, your hair shining like silver, the color of your eyes seemed even lighter. You can't imagine how happy I was at that time. I was dancing in circles with you in my arms. These are for you! How cheerful you laughed, reaching out to kiss me. We’ll be like this forever, Gehrman! You and me, we sat at the far end of the garden, shoulder to shoulder, your cheek close to my lips. All the meaningless fears, fishy stench of hunting, and whispers of the Great Ones vanished like ghosts at sunrise. And now I have been parted from you for so long in the other side of the dream, I have long forgotten the happiness from touching you and how we could understand each other without saying any words. Yet the white flowers have never bloomed so brightly before: our last night together, there was a bouquet of white flowers on your bedside. The smell of sebum, the smell of people, the smell of sweat, the tangled limbs; you purposely decorated the whole room exactly as you did at Byrgenwerth, where our days were blissful beyond words, days that I don’t even want to force myself to remember. It was too sweet and too painful, and I pray countless times to just die and be done with it! Memory is like a lady wielding a long sword for whom I am enchanted, but she stabs the sword right through my chest the next second. No, it is not mere pain that horrifies me, but the pain that constantly reminds me that I have lost you. If I could choose to forget everything and let the pain numb my heart, the long nightmare would seem less torturous, but what else could I offer? My life has long been worthless! Knowing that memories would only cause me to sink into deeper pain, I crash into the pain nonetheless, for you are in every single bit of the memories. Laurence, you gave me the most fervent caress and the most complete commitment on our last night. I really want to do it with you again. Let’s do it again, Gehrman, I'm in love with your beautiful arms, let me wrap my arms around it a little longer, and die. There is no difference between dying tonight, dying in the arms of my lover, dying among the white flowers in a fruitful garden, and dying at the hands of the nameless Moon summoned by my own hands. Gehrman. When it was over, you were sobbing faintly as a child, with a lock of hair hanging down at the nape of your neck, looking haggard and almost old. We will soon be separated. Let's at least be cheerful for the rest of our time together. Will we be separated. What if we die right away. Death will not take pity on us. This is not the end we talked about. Gehrman. When I turned to leave, you propped your arms on the mantelpiece, bowed your head, and covered your face with your hands. I went to the door and stopped, turning my head to look at you before quietly returning to your side, taking one end of your cassock and kissing it, but you did not hear me. Farewell, Laurence, until the day when you complete your medical treatment!

But you said you were afraid, and I am just beginning to realize how foolish and ignorant I was to have failed to hear the words caught in your throat that night, and not even for the first time! So, you’re intent to hunting beasts? Even if they are man? You were silent, then nodded gently. Indeed. It won’t be long. I dared not look into your eyes, and dared not see your pain and hesitation. You must have wanted to reassure me to have not said anything, so that I would know that on the Night of the Hunt there would always be a light that ignites for me. My lover is waiting for me. And now you've also had a taste of what it's like to be waited for, just like the messenger who ran day and night to report the news. Do you still remember? We read that foreign story in Byrgenwerth. In that distant town there must have been a lover who was looking forward to him as well. He finally saw the light of day, and a pair of familiar eyes in the crowd. He waved his hands and shouted the news of victory, before dropping to the ground and died. Were you afraid that I was going to die like the messenger, that all your unspoken fondness could only be uttered at the church's funeral for me? You said in your letter that you are afraid, you are afraid that I would become a memory. Laurence, I am afraid too! Even though you swore on the blood of all the Great Ones that you would be here next, I am still afraid that there isn’t enough time for me to wait for you. I appreciate your honesty, and it is the most reassuring to know that your lover bears no secrecy. Is this a proper response? I don’t know, for I do not wish to read your dishonest words while shuddering at your hunches. Laurence, will we ever meet again? If that night was our final farewell, then I beg of you! Tell me lies, I beg you; don’t let this letter in front of me be the last letter I see, don’t die while I read these words until they are engraved in my heart. I have changed, till the next time I see you.

I can't stop thinking about how we wasted so much time. Why didn't I find all the coldblood flowers in the Labyrinth – all of them, the ones about to bloom, the ones yet to bloom, and the ones in full bloom - for you? Is there a limit to love? If there is, I haven't found it yet, and now I'm left to sleep away my senility in the garden. After all the weddings you have officiated at Great Cathedral, there should have been one for us too! At least leave me with this memory. Yes, I am asking you to marry me! The lily bushes at the Altar would be surrounded by the faint scent of spring. Did I keep the ring well, that tiny silver ring? I reach my ungloved right hand into my pocket. The Choir’s anthem rings out loud and clear under the vaulted ceiling of the Great Cathedral. It’s like the day I first met you. Are you still in the lecture hall, dressed in that student outfit with that smile on your face? What does it take to bring forth the you in my heart, as it has stopped beating for a long time? The chords fall like flowers in front of you, and in one blink of an eye you have come to me, lustrous and radiant. You burst with love, and the love penetrates me. You must be Gehrman. The ring is now on your finger. I am Laurence. Master Willem is waiting for you. The spring sun beckons to us outside the open Cathedral doors. We are walking by the Moonside Lake, as if all the thoughts bound on the ground would waft away with drifts of the lake. You turn your head to look at me. Gehrman. Our hands are clasped together. Now all those bad things won’t happen, will they? As long as we are together. Suddenly, you grab your robe and took off, and I catch up with you at the side door of the College, and we laugh out loud, panting. You laugh. But you weren’t happy when I you wrote to me. No, but if you’d come, I would never be unhappy again. A shared silence falls between us. I try my best to control my urge to kneel in front of you and confess to you, to say that Laurence, I have fallen in love with you. You are quiet for a long time. I imagine you – I hear you – walking up to me, wrapping your arms swiftly around my neck. I am waiting, shivering for a miracle to happen. Gehrman. You press your lips onto mine. My dearest! My beating heart is now filled with awe, for I have never seen such transparent love before. I see your pale face gleaming with light, and we are still looking at each other. My mind is so imprinted with your enthusiasm and tenderness under the pretended indifference and calmness, that even as I am withering away I can still remember your beauty. That day, you left Byrgenwerth and made a marriage vow with a hunter, a vow to love each other forever.

You sent a hundred hunters to bring me your kisses, yet they would remember nothing at the end, not even your kiss. Your letters have never arrived in my hands, and they would only be rediscovered long after you have passed. People would read them and wonder who this Gehrman is. They would remember nothing, not even a single name. That’s why I mentioned you to a hunter before at the Great Tree, just once. The person you love must be very happy, I think. The young hunter said. For he is in possession of such a love. Yes, I agreed, he has passed away but remained immortal, he kept our promise to bring me home, he lit every candle at the Astral Clocktower and blew them out one by one, he waved a blessing to people on the streets of Yharnam, he walked through the Lecture Building, and he smiled at me at Byrgenwerth as if I were seeing him for the first time. Laurence, take care of the white flowers, for me. Live well and live a long life, and stop worrying that your head will get chopped off. I believe that you will live to be as old as Master Willem, and that our story will become a somewhat nostalgic past that you shall tell your followers. I am no longer lonely. I was once alone and afraid, but the emptiness and darkness have passed and now I have found you. The traveler who walks alone at night has finally stepped in an everbright room, and you are there, my dear Laurence.


End file.
